People Will Talk: The International Edition

“I never went out in the evening thinking, ‘Now I must get some sex,’ which nowadays most people do. I went out saying, ‘I must be my glorious self and it will attract people to me….’ I just wanted to be admired…. Ms. (Marlene) Dietrich said, ‘You have to let them put it in, or they don’t come back.’ That’s a wonderful thing to have said. She didn’t want sex. She wanted admiration, applause and praise. Sex would have smudged her makeup and spoiled her hair.”
—London-born author Quentin Crisp, writing in The Last Word: An Autobiography. Via HuffingtonPost.com

“(Putin thinks) most Russians believe they’ve never met an LGBT person in their lives. Also they immediately see LGBT people as ‘other,’ lending to the success of singling the group out as a ‘problem.’”
—The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia author, Masha Gessen. Via Salon.com

“(Offenders) have become more aggressive and less fearful. It seems to them that, to some extent, the government supports their actions. Many perpetrators openly talk about their crimes as noble deeds.”
—Svetlana Zakharova, a board member with Russian LGBT Network, the country’s most prominent gay rights campaign group. Hate crimes against LGBT people in Russia have doubled in five years in the wake of a 2013 law banning “gay propaganda,” with murders accounting for almost 200 out of 250 crimes analyzed, according to the Center for Independent Social Research. Via Trust.org

“People see it as a beacon of hope after 16 years in which no progress has been made in Romania concerning equal rights, in terms of legislation. A positive decision in the Coman case would also send a symbolic signal to society that LGBT people must be treated as citizens, that ought to be respected by the state, by institutions, by fellow citizens.”
—Vlad Viski, the president of MozaiQ, a Romanian LGBT group. Adrian Coman, a Romanian rights activist, and his American partner, Claibourn Robert Hamilton were legally married in Belgium in 2010. Romania currently prohibits marriage between people of the same sex, and does not recognize same-sex marriages carried out abroad. Via NYTimes.com

“When I first started on Instagram six years ago, the only stuff that existed was guy-liner. It was Fall Out Boy, and it was not glamorous. There wasn’t anything close to applying false lashes. I wanted to feel pretty and beautiful without being a drag queen. I was wearing a scarf on my head and wearing makeup. I’m a Filipino plus-size brown man. I felt like a clown. But I was comfortable at my work. That was a very, very safe place for me.”
—Jeffree Starr, whom Marie Claire calls “one of the beauty boys of Instagram” for his pioneering promotion of men’s makeup movement; he has 3.6 million social media followers. Via NYTimes.com

“Starting from Nov. 18, 2017, concerning our community’s public sensitivity, any events such as LGBT… cinema, theater, panels, interviews, exhibitions are banned until further notice in our province to provide peace and security.”
—Statement from Ankara, Turkey’s governor’s office, that added such exhibitions could cause different groups in society to “publicly harbor hatred and hostility” toward each other and therefore pose a risk to public safety. Gay pride parades have been banned in Istanbul for the last two years. Via Reuters.com

“(Offenders) have become more aggressive and less fearful. It seems to them that, to some extent, the government supports their actions. Many perpetrators openly talk about their crimes as noble deeds.”
—Svetlana Zakharova, a board member with Russian LGBT Network, the country’s most prominent gay rights campaign group. Hate crimes against LGBT people in Russia have doubled in five years in the wake of a 2013 law banning “gay propaganda,” with murders accounting for almost 200 out of 250 crimes analyzed, according to the Center for Independent Social Research. Via Trust.org

“I don’t think it would exist! Music would be so different. In the 1960s, the British pop music scene was almost entirely run by gay men. You wouldn’t have had The Beatles without Brian Epstein, a gay man. You wouldn’t have had David Bowie without Kenneth Pitt, a gay man. You wouldn’t have had the ’80s bands, like Culture Club or Frankie Goes to Hollywood, without David Bowie. We were there at the beginning of jazz. Blues wouldn’t exist without the number of lesbian and bisexual women involved in it, like Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Billie Holiday. If it wasn’t for Wendy Carlos, a queer woman, we may not have had popular exposure to the Moog synthesizer. The influence of LGBTQ acts is insurmountable, and it’s certainly far greater than anybody’s ever given it credit.”
—UK-based writer Darryl W. Bullock, author of David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music, when asked, “What do you think modern music would look like without LGBTQ people?” Via Vice.com